Probably The Greatest Football Team In The World........EVER!!!

You have probably seen and read about all the rest, now try the best. An entire lens about the greatest football team to grace the green green grass.... Aston Villa. A club with proud and ancient tradition, who are striving to bring the good times back again. The club was founded by a group of cricketers in Birmingham and initially played on an amusement park, sharing with (very) lacrosse players and trick-cyclists. People thought they were mad !!
The name actually comes from a Shakespeare poem. The Bard had sauntered across from Stratford-Upon-Avon to view the building work in the area close to Spaghetti Junction (which didn't exist in his day, it was called Spaghetti crossroads then). The poem read :-

"The sight of such labours and burgeoning construction,
Beauteous result of that exquisite function,
As ton and as ton of brick
From deepest sunset orange to plain manilla,
Were assembled forsooth,
To createth a villa."

The colours chosen by the new club reflected their attitude to the game. The claret picked to reflect the colour of the red wine quaffed by the carafe after playing and the blue, the sky behind as they raised their glasses high in celebration. And celebration figured large in the early days. They became the second team to complete the League and FA Cup "double" when men were men and footballers wore bloomers. Indeed, despite the success, they were labelled as "The Villains" of the piece, when in 1895, as holders of the FA Cup, they put the trophy on display in the window of a sports shop. The Cup was stolen and was never recovered. The Villa were fined £25 and had to pay an equivalent amount to replace the FA Cup. Luckily, they were insured and so was one of their players, Charles Athersmith, who played the whole of one match under an umbrella when it was raining. Anthony Smythe once played a match pursued by his butler carrying cucumber sandwiches and Tobias Larman wore the full regalia his position of Chair of the Cradley Heath Chamber of Commerce allowed during a game against Glossop NE.

The club have, since the Second World War, fallen upon comparatively barren times. Villa did win the first ever League Cup, when only a few teams entered and won again in 1977, which is a little known fact, because the Final against Everton went to so many replays, most people forgot who took part, let alone who came out on top. This final had to be played on a neutral ground and after the initial game at Wembley, toured the country playing on 58 of the 92 League grounds at that time. A First Division championship in 1981 was achieved with an unbelievably low number of players (9, in fact) and then the following season, took the European Cup, despite losing their goalie very early in the match and hairy monster, Peter Withe, almost missing the winning goal from two feet out, but managing to guide it in off his shin pad. Unfortunately, Villa have slipped into a cycle where they appoint managers in rotation, on their personality or lack of it (Venglos, Atkinson, Taylor, Little, Gregory, O'leary). An excellent ground (a regular venue for FA Cup semis) needs a successful side to do it justice.

FAMOUS PLAYERS :- Gary Penrice, Ian Olney, Pongo Waring (who had his own dressing room), Brendan Ormsby, Perry Barr, Ian Ormondroyd, Dean Saunders, Andy Gray.

FAMOUS FANS : - Nigel Kennedy (Violinist), Floella Benjamin (Children's TV presenter), Mark Williams (Actor - The Fast Show (TV), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (Film)), John Taylor (Musician - Duran Duran), Jane Sixsmith (England Ladies Hockey player), Sir Norman Fowler (Former MP and Chairman of the Conservative Party) Tom Hanks.